


K-Day for Christine

by chicagoartnerd



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Tattoos, Trans, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the drift we see Newt getting his Kaiju tattoos from a woman. This is the story of the artist behind Newt's sleeves and chest piece and how they first met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	K-Day for Christine

**Author's Note:**

> This was for Jaeger Con's K-day prompt but I never posted it. Recently there has been a call for more trans characters in fic and I am happy to oblige.

She had just finished a memorial tattoo to some one’s dead mother, the first tattoo of the day, when it happened. Some one at the front of the shop screamed for them to go to NBC or ABC on the computer and pull up the news feed. She froze. She had been in sixth grade when 9/11 had happened. This was what happened then too. Everyone was silent and shaking, gathered around a screen watching the horror unfold. Christine stumbled through getting payment for the tattoo as her client almost fled the shop. Everyone else who was working there stayed and watched as San Francisco was torn apart by a 800 ft monster.

Everything was going to be different after this. There was no going back to the biggest battles she had to face being how to get her landlord to fix her leaking showerhead and her roommate to pay his half of the rent. The monsters and darkness she loved in the world of fantasy and sci-fi had just stepped through the gate and were wrecking up the East coast of her country.  It was just like watching the towers fall. Someone whispered it looked like a movie. Like it couldn’t be happening, it looked like something out of a movie. 

The shop stayed open for its normal hours but all the other artists had left as she and Rosa sat there glued to the desktop screen in the back of the shop. They were co-owners of the Black Ibis. Rosa had wanted to call it the Black Sheep and she had wanted to call it the Scarlet Ibis. They compromised on that as well as their failed romantic relationship. Things weren’t awkward at work anymore and none of the people there knew her before she came to Boston. Before she was Christine Comfrey.

Just Rosa.

And Rosa had loved her once. They held hands fiercely as the first nuclear bomb was dropped on the monster the media had dubbed The Trespasser. It was near midnight when a man stumbled through the door. The bells breaking the heavy silence like a siren. Rosa looked up in anger and was about to curse the person out when she raised her hand and said she would take care of it.

 From the back she noticed the man, well he looked more like a boy with an oversized leather jacket and big thick-rimmed glasses. He stumbled to the counter and she sighed internally. Getting drunks to leave the shop sucked on a good day and today was not a good day.  When she approached the counter he swung towards her and put his hands down quickly on the glass countertop with all of the gauges and earrings in it. 

“Hello I’d like to get a tattoo please.”

She smiled ruefully and said.

“Dude we’re closing. Also in case you haven’t noticed today was the start of the end of the world.”

He smiled lopsidedly back at her and tried to adjust his glasses fumbling.

“That’s why I have to get a tattoo! I can’t go out like an unmarked punk now can I?”

This time she laughed.

“And this wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you are very drunk would it?” 

“I’m only mostly drunk. But even mostly drunk I’m still a professor at MIT who really wants a badass tattoo of the kaiju that attacked today.” 

That got her to stop. She looked at him really hard and then in a low voice said. 

“And why would you want a tattoo like that Mister MIT professor?”

His eyes lit up.

“I just got my most recent doctorate in Atmospheric and Planetary Science but the one before that was in Molecular Biology. Basically all the Science I love has been radically altered today. The entire course of human scientific study has shifted!” “Something from another planet or dimension that is of a biological nature has just ripped a hole in the fabric of our reality. Why on earth wouldn’t I want to commemorate it on my body? Brand it into my very human flesh?”

He saw the brave new world as a wonderland of science. She loved science fiction and fantasy dearly as it had been the escape from her childhood and adolescence she needed not to destroy herself. But she had seen what happened in the aftermath of seismic change. Her father was a military man from the age of eighteen onward, he fought in every war since the Gulf. She had never been what he wanted.

The world shifted to a darker less habitable place for people who were marginalized, who didn’t have the “right” voice. What might have been a Godsend for people like this man was another reason for those in power, the elite, the rich, the white, to sacrifice people they deemed lesser than themselves. The whole of humanity would suffer greatly because of this invasion. People richer than God would see to that.

His view was so naïve and blind but he was too drunk and she was too tired to tell him so. Instead she walked around the counter warily. 

“I don’t agree with you as to why you should get a _kaiju_ tattoo, a word you appropriated from Japanese by the way, but it’s not my place to stop you from getting one. You’re just not getting one here. Not right now anyway.”

She walked over and opened the door gesturing for him to get out. He slumped but then made to leave. On his way out the doorstep he fell flat on his face. Christine sighed and yelled back at Rosa.

“I’m leaving for the night and taking this charity case to the bus stop.”

Rosa poked her head out of the back with a scowl.

“If he gives you any trouble call me. Be safe Cariño.”

Although Rosa didn’t approve Christine had been taking in strays for years now mostly because she used to be one. She knew what it felt like to have no one and nothing you could rely on, not even your own body.

Christine nodded solemnly, put on her coat, and stooped down to help the man to his feet. His forehead was trickling blood and his lip was a little swollen as she dragged him up to stand.

“What’s your name? Where do you live?”

“Cambridge. Newton Geiszler.”

Christine rolled her eyes and started to drag him down the street.

“Close enough to know you’re not concussed but not close enough to let you ride the bus an hour home in the middle of the night. You’re going to sleep it off on my couch.”

He stumbled into her side as they turned the corner. She only lived three blocks north of the shop but getting there was going to be fun with his dead weight at her side. Luckily she was about a foot taller than him otherwise they both might have toppled over. 

“How the hell did you manage to get to the shop Doctor Newton Geiszler?”

She had mumbled it rhetorically but he cheerfully answered.

“Oh God call me Newt only my mom calls me Doctor.”

She huffed a laugh as they turned onto her street. 

“Oooh how kinky.”

He made a stuttering cough and then laughed.

“Not nearly. Not with my mom anyway God.”

She jammed her hip into his side as they took the stairs to her second floor apartment slowly. 

“Oh really. I take it someone as learned as you gets plenty of action at MIT.” 

“Only if you count late night dates with the centrifuge. If you do then I’m a big time P.I.M.P.”

She laughed hard enough to drop her keys and then cursed at having to try and bend down to get them while still making sure Newt didn’t brain himself again. They both stumbled into her apartment as she practically flung him on her weathered gray loveseat. He started to roll off and she kicked him back on with her candy apple red Docs before going to pour both of them some water. When she padded back to the sofa he was fast asleep.

Sighing Christine left a glass of water for him and an aspirin. He would need both come morning. She thought about locking her bedroom door, it had two dead bolts for this very reason, but left it open. There was nothing valuable to steal in the apartment except her tattoo gun and oil paints and those were locked up in her closet. If he was a professor at MIT he probably wouldn’t want her gun. Also she was pretty sure she could kick his ass if he tried to make like a monster and trespass. 

She turned off her bedside lamp and crawled into bed but didn’t sleep. Christine silently traced the tentacles tattooed on her left arm up and around her back to the tawny colored wings that flared back there. She couldn’t feel the mottled snakeskin tattooed down her spin but she pretended she could. She was a chimera. A monster made up of many different creatures. Just like most humans. Except she was disparate in body as well as mind.

Without turning on the news on her laptop she knew the fiend still raged and ripped apart California. A part of her knew this was just the beginning of the Hydra. Two heads sprouted where before there was one until it overwhelmed humanity and swallowed the earth.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

She painted the monsters, transferred their power into scarred flesh. But that little man out on her couch. Maybe he could help slay the dragon. If he ended up wanting to.

Sometime around sunrise she must have drifted off because she woke around noon to the heady smell of bacon. It didn’t smell like burning just delicious. Skeptical she threw on an old t-shirt and cut off sweatpants and went into the kitchen to find Newt striped down to his black jeans in a sweaty undershirt cooking bacon and eggs. He turned to her surprisingly chipper. 

“Hey! I was wondering when you were going to wake up and then I remembered that one of the best ways to get some one out of bed is bacon. Unless they’re vegetarian. You’re not are you?” 

She shook her head no, her messy long black hair falling into her eyes, and sat down at the card table that functioned as a dining room table. He handed her a plate deftly and she set to eating it. It was hot and savory and exactly what she needed. As she ate she watched his back as he flipped and fried. When he sat down across from her to eat he stopped.

“Am I over stepping my bounds here? I mean you did give me a couch for the night but that doesn’t give me the right to cook in your kitchen or even stay here any longer. This is your space.”

She nodded and he started to get up when she raised her hand.

“I didn’t mean leave I just meant that yeah you are all up in my space but in this instance I don’t mind too much. You made bacon; the couch surfing is forgiven.”

He smiled sheepishly into his eggs and she took another bite of the crunchy bacon. 

“Do you still want that tattoo now you’re sober and upright?" 

He froze and looked up at her seriously.

“Yeah I do.”

She nodded.

“Do you even know what my work looks like?”

He scrambled under the table and fished out his phone from his pants.

“I saw this online when I searched for monster tattoo art in Boston.”

It was a sleeve she had done last year for a client of a ship lost at sea in a storm being besieged by a many-armed kraken. For something so dark it was surprisingly colorful and dynamic.

Most of her private artwork was like that but many of her tattoos were black and white or more traditional in their coloring.  He had found the one tattoo out of all of hers that showed off what she was really like as an artist. She shook her head and rose motioning for him to follow her.

Her current roommate was paying less than she was so she had relegated him to the futon next to the couch and instead was using the smaller bedroom as a studio. When she opened the door to it Newt whistled from behind her and waited for her to step in before he followed. Christine hung back and watched him go from painting to drawing, marveling at each one for his own little eternity before turning to her. 

“I want one like all of this. A tattoo of The Trespasser that’s uniquely you. Uniquely your art. Something that’s beautiful and terrifying.”

She wedged her shoulder against the door jam. 

“They’ve only existed for a day and already a _kaiju_ fanboy I see.”

He waved that away. 

“Says the girl whose personal work reminds me of all of Hayao Miyazaki’s monsters.” 

She flipped him off and he laughed. She couldn’t help but smile at this strange little scientist she had let sleep on her couch.

“Okay. I’ll draw you something. But I won’t ink you till it’s over in California. You and I both know this is only the beginning but let’s wait until this one is dead first.”

He looked crestfallen but then brightened.

“So should I come by the Black Ibis in a few days or?” 

Christine chuckled.

“Give me your number and I’ll call you when it’s done. Then come back here. I’m not doing this tattoo for you at the shop. One Rosa already doesn’t like you and two I don’t want any one else to see it before it’s done.”

It took the U.S. and U.K. air forces four more days to finally kill the world’s first alien visitor. By then she had seen enough images of it to have it burned into her brain and under her eyelids for the rest of her life. It was terrifying and beautiful. He had been right. But she didn’t love it the same way he did. The price for what it meant to the world was just too high. Still Christine couldn’t deny the sublime nature of the creature. Some nightmares were breathtaking more than they made you scream. 

The next day she called Newt. It was raining when he showed up and tracked muddy water all through her kitchen. He was going to follow her back to her studio when she put a stop to it and made him sit at the kitchen-folding table.

She came back with a watercolor that was a little smaller than a piece of copy paper and handed it to him. He stared at it for a long time running his fingers over the tooth of the paper. When he looked up his eyes were a little watery behind his huge frames.

“It’s perfect. Thank you.”

Something shifted inside her. Christine couldn’t speak so instead she nodded and went to the studio to get her kit. She was silent as she methodically set up her inks, swabbed his left wrist with alcohol and shaved it with a disposable razor. Then carefully applied the stencil before setting to work on the outline. At first he was rigid, with teeth clenched, but soon he relaxed into the pain. She mechanically wiped away his blood along with the extra ink as she worked.

“Why did you become a tattoo artist and not a professional illustrator or painter?” 

She looked up briefly and then went back to the high pitched hum of the gun. 

“My father was a military man, he never understood why any one would want to be an artist. So he told me that if I wanted to go to art school I had to join the army to pay for it. I left home and apprenticed at a tattoo parlor in North Carolina instead. It was cheaper.”

“But you’re really talented, couldn’t you have gotten a scholarship or something?”

She shrugged.

“Oh sure but a scholarship will only pay your tuition. Where would I have slept? How would I have eaten? Besides there were other more important things than college to spend my money on.”

Newt was quiet after that until she switched to a bigger needle to start filling in color.

“I must seem like such an idiot to you. We’re the same age and yet you’ve lived so much more than I have. Is that why you didn’t want to give me a tattoo?”

She stopped and put down the gun still looking down at her black plastic gloves. When neither one of them moved she looked up into his eyes again.

“No. I didn’t want to give you a tattoo because this monster is going to mean so many different things to every one on this planet. It’s too important a thing to get done lightly. All tattoos, even the ones people deem silly or frivolous, are important. The act of permanently scarring your body for the whole world to see always is.”

He reached out for her hand and she gently gave it to him.

“What made you change your mind?”

Christine looked away then slowly looked back.

“One of the things this attack will mean to people will be change. Change for the worse and for the better. I figured that maybe by solidifying this monster for you you would decide to be part of the change for the better not worse. That maybe my art could mean something important in all this. Maybe.”

He squeezed her hand and then reached out with the other to tilt her face to his.

“You don’t know me, Hell I don’t know you, but thank you. For believing in me. Even just enough to give me a tattoo you disagree with.”

She smiled sadly as he leaned in and gently kissed her on the lips. It was so tender and brief she almost whimpered but instead let out a slow breath of air.

“Newt.”

“I know. You’re not interested in me like that. I get it and it’s cool. I won’t do it again but it seemed,”

She cut him off with a kiss much rougher and a little bit desperate. This time the both pulled apart for air.

“That’s not it. I’m not what you’re expecting first of all. And second of all I need to finish your tattoo.”

He sat back and handed her his arm again obediently. She gulped and tried not to flush as he watched her intently while she finished her work.

“What do you mean you’re not what I’m expecting? Cause so far you’ve been a surprise around every corner. A talented, brilliant, beautiful, artist who lets me sleep on her couch black out drunk and then gives me the most amazing tattoo and kiss. I would consider all that pretty surprising.”

She wiped off the last of the leftover ink and blood and started to wrap the new tattoo in plastic.

“My body. It’s not what you’re expecting.”

“Covered in scary tattoos?” 

She tried to laugh but it came out strained.

“Says the guy with the Trespasser wrist tattoo. Think lower. My uh, genitals, are not what you’re expecting.”

He looked at her and smiled lopsidedly.

“Are they tentacles? Feelers? Covered in tiny tongues? Cause that would be really hot.”

This time she did laugh and it wasn’t strange.

“No you ass I’m a trans woman.”

He smiled affectionately and pulled her chair closer to his. 

“Ah is that all? Not quite as exciting as multiple probes but still pretty hot for such an talented woman.” 

She grinned at him in amazement. Who was this boy? And why wasn’t she kissing him again. And then she was as she stumbled onto his lap. Both of them tugging at each other’s shirts haphazardly. Everything was tongue and little laughs and giggles, mostly from Newt.

She did manage to drag him into her bed in a semi-timely manner. He latched onto her neck and breasts like a drowning man and she had to roll her eyes as she took both their cocks in hand and started to jerk them off. They were both a mess and it was more fun than she’d had in ages. He was eager to please and she was more than happy to let him devour every part of her because it felt amazing. Because together they had sex that made sense to them and felt good. His tongue slicked in and out of her ass while she ground down into the mattress and moaned. She came and kissed him fiercely then rolled over. In a few thrusts between her slicked hand and thighs he was gone as well. 

Hell after that she was even open to probes and tentacles if he had them, but not yet. There was definitely going to be a later. Afterwards they lay stuck together tangled in her sweaty bed sheets as he put his glasses back on and looked at her.

“You’re really amazing you know that?”

She smiled and nipped his shoulder lazily.

“Ah I bet you say that to all the women you have wild monkey sex with on the first date.”

He leaned back and grinned at the ceiling. 

“Actually I haven’t really had sex with any one, dude, lady, or otherwise, in five years-ish? I probably shouldn’t have admitted that should I.”

She shook her head playfully.

“Probably not but I’m not complaining because that was good for me. It’s been awhile since I’ve slept with someone who didn’t treat my body like it was made of land mines. Messy, sweaty, body smashing against body sex is good for your soul.”

“Amen!”

They both laughed and rolled against each other, fighting half heartedly before falling asleep.  She showed him how to take care of his tattoo and told him not to do the sweaty Creative thing and actually takes showers, put lotion on it, and not wrap it up again. He grinned when he handed her the cash and she handed him back half of it.

“I give discounts to customers who give me mind-blowing orgasms. Shop policy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for future Kaiju tattoos.”

That sobered her up and he frowned at her dark expression.

“They’re going to keep coming. You don’t open a portal in space and time and send giant monsters through it if you give up easily. Unless we figure out a way to close the portal and stop them from ever coming back we’re screwed. Or I guess come up with a way to run away to outer space.”

Newt froze at that. 

“Don’t worry. Everything will work itself out. Humanity is pretty hardy as far as species go.”

“I’m betting that’s what the dinosaurs thought too.” 

Newt didn’t look discouraged if anything he looked delighted as she shook her head and let him out of her flat. A couple days later she got a phone call from him that said his wrist might be infected and she sighed and invited him over. It wasn’t but she gently cleaned it and they ended up having sex on the loveseat and the kitchen counter. 

Life went on for her at the shop. Lots of people wanting to memorialize the K-day attack sought her out for some reason. Christine found out later a picture of Newt’s tattoo had gone viral on the internet. She saw Newt on select weeknights and they went to go see roller derby matches and Japanese horror flicks. Afterwards getting greasy diner food and making out like teenagers in the park after it had closed. It was the only carefree part of her life then, being silly and young with him. Except for the moments when he spoke about the Kaiju like they were Gods he wanted to worship and possibly fuck.

She was obsessed with them too if she wanted to admit it. People at work wanted her to draw The Trespasser into their flesh but she went home and burned its image into her retinas on canvases and blocks of wood. They got into their first big fight after Labra attacked Manila. He wanted to use his research on biological engineering to help understand the Kaiju but he talked about them like they were friendly and not destroying an eighth of the worlds’ population.

“If we knew what their purpose was, if we could actually study them before they died and degraded in our atmosphere we might be able to survive together with them.”

She ground her teeth and tilted her head to the side.

“That might be true if this were like tornadoes or some other natural disaster. But these things are sentient enough to want to actively destroy us.”

“They are beautiful and terrifying. Seemingly forces of nature like a hurricane both destroy and kill people. But a hurricane offers me no ill will. A volcano doesn’t seek people out specifically and destroy them. We aren’t going to be able to co-exist with them Newt!” 

“How do you know? Has any one tried to communicate with them? Understand them? What if it is possible to find out what they want and help them achieve and live side by side?”

She shook her head slowly.

“I think if you ever tried to get close enough to one to do that it would eat you.”

“Well maybe I’ll just have to go do that then. See one up close and personal.”

“If you want to die that badly there’s a tall enough building a train stop away.” 

He shoved her kitchen chair and sat down in it angrily.

“I don’t understand why you’re so quick to hate them.”

She almost kicked the card table that functioned as a dinning room table to the ground. Instead Christine crossed her arms and took several deep breaths trying not to shake. When she finally looked back at him his face grew alarmed. She was crying and she wasn’t doing a very pretty job of it.

“I’m afraid of them Newt. They are awe-inspiring and I understand why you idolize them but they scare the ever-loving shit out of me. For the first time in my life I’m really truly happy, I’m loved, and you know what happens? The world decides to end, doesn’t it just fucking figure.”

He stumbled to his feet and motioned if it was all right to hold her. She nodded and they embraced her head having to stoop to rest on his forehead.

“For the first time in a long time I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die. I want to keep making weird art, eating grilled cheese naked, and having wild sex with you on the floor. I want to be alive and the Kaiju coming here are kind of antithetical to that.”

He looked at her with open tenderness and murmured.

“I want all of that too. But I don’t know that if it’s possible to do that as long as I still want to understand the Kaiju and stop them from taking all that away.”

She sighed and then sniffed disgustingly.

“One day, hopefully not too soon, you’ll have to choose which form of life is more important to you Newton Geiszler. It’s too bad I already know which one you’ll choose.”

And when she pulled away his heart was broken behind his glass’ lenses. He left after that and they didn’t see each other for almost a week before her noon appointment showed up and it was him. 

Rosa asked her if she wanted her to throw him out but she stopped her and instead took an early lunch. He had brought her markers, the brand from Japan that she loved to use up like they were cigarettes. He apologized and she forgave him knowing that in the end it would hurt them both. She should have let him go towards the Kaiju alone. But if they were going to die, every one not just him and her, then she was going to do it happy. And art made her happy, poutine made her happy, and Newt made her happy.

All of those things were also a pain in her ass but she didn’t care. So after every monster after every defeat she would tattoo him and dream of monsters that fought for her not against. After the third attack the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was fully mobilized and recruiting. She thought about enlisting but didn’t know what good it would do. She’d seen Star Trek and all the red shirts died fighting battles they couldn’t win. Christine was artistically inclined cannon fodder and she knew it. 

She told Newt about it anyway and he mentioned he had been liaising with them. It seemed like only a matter of time before they recruited him either forcibly or he volunteered to go Alaska. If she went with him would there be any place for her there other than as a girlfriend? She doubted it.

 One day after Onibaba had attacked he showed up at her door soaking wet and grinning. She knew what he had come there for but she shook her head and motioned for him to follow her to her studio.

“After the Jaegers started fighting Kaiju I couldn’t stop drawing mechs but something changed recently with the last attack. Every one’s noticed it not just me. They’re getting bigger, smarter, and the attacks are happening faster.”

He started to say something but she cut him off. 

“I believe that you can help stop them I really do. But I can’t. So I want to work on something I can do. I’ll give you one last tat but that’s it. Once you save the world come find me. I’ll be some where safe.”

He looked sullen but took her hand.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” 

“No this isn’t what I want but in this world I can’t have what I want so I’m always settling for the next best option Newt. It’s what we humans do.”

He kissed her and she held onto him desperately. The last session was a myriad of pleasure and pain, bittersweet and bloody. Christine didn’t want to let him go but she couldn’t come with him. Maybe every time he looked at his arms and chest in the mirror he would think of her. The marks she put on him. That would have to be enough. Nothing was forever not love and not even earth it seemed.

Christine just hoped she wouldn’t be a part of the last generation to see and experience either. And that was why she let him go without a fight. She would keep making art and he would try to save the world. Maybe one day their paths would cross again if they were lucky, luckier than she had ever been. She wasn’t going to hold her breath. 


End file.
